A friend donated me this old laptop, which had a broken LCD. The laptop was old but it worked just fine. I had no intention to spend money to get it repaired, it just would not worth the money. Instead I just removed the screen from the body of the laptop and used the laptop as a HTPC connected to a TV.

Then the screen part was pretty much useless, I could have just trashed it, but I just kept it, just in case I could do something with it. Then I had this idea that I could turn it into something useful.

It turned out that it is very easy, and very useful if you're into drawing. It is a light board/table for drawing, it is very cheap and portable, you can easily carry on your backpack with your books.

Step 1:

Take the old laptop apart, and separate the screen completely off the body of the computer.

Step 2:

Remove the LCD itself from the plastic housing, then start to pry open the metal bezel. There are some screws you need to remove and then some retaining clips.

Step 3:

After removing the metal bezel, you can remove the broken LCD from the rest of the LCD assembly.

Step 4:

The driver board will come off with the LCD.

You will be left with the backlight, try to not touch the layers.

The backlight is made of a lamp CCFL in this one or LED strip, reflective sheet, a guiding glass, some fresnel films, and diffuser films. They have a very specific order, orientation and side. Just keep then as is, or it will be very hard to get then in the correct way later.

Step 5:

Now we will work with the backlight circuit.

This screen have a CCFL lamp, this type of lamp requires a Inverter board to light up. This board is attached on the bottom of the screen, you can just use this original board.

If you have a more modern screen with led backlighting, It will not have a inverter board, you easily make then work as well. You will need to build a led driver circuit, and if you want then to be dimmable a PWM circuit will be required.

Step 6: Inverter board pinout

I reversed engineered the inverter board to find the correct pinout.

What I did was, the board have a controller IC, I looked for the data sheet of that IC and found its pinout description, so I traced where the pins of the connector would go to which pin on the IC.

Step 7: Aditional circuit

To power the inverter board it require 19v, and 5v logic.

So I came up with simplest circuit in order to make it work.

A low power 5volts linear regulator, to provide logic HIGH to the enable pin and a variable potentiometer to provide the analog input to the dimmer IC.

Step 8:

Solder the circuit to a perf board, and test if it work.

Step 9: Fitting everything

After cutting the perf board, make sure it will fit inside the case.

Make sure it is not touching any metal, and hot glue everything.

Step 10:

You can mark the tip of the potentiometer with white-out, and touch the bezel to know were to cut a whole.

I used a screwdriver to dig a whole in the plastic and enlarge it with a knife. If you find hard to make a whole in harder plastics, just heat up a screwdriver with a fire, and melt a whole.

Step 11: Glass

I took the broken LCD to a Glass Store and bought a glass sheet of the same size. It was a bit thicker though about 3mm, but I could fit it inside the original lcd assembly.

It was very cheap, about $ 2.50.

Step 12: Feet

Add some silicon/rubber feet on the other side. You don't want it sliding around.